


Death by Bard

by Istezada



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 22:51:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11323365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: Death and the dead were all around him. Blood congealed on his boot soles and the absence of living sang from the softened tips of his fingers to the dripping point of his sword.





	Death by Bard

Death and the dead were all around him. Blood congealed on his boot soles and the absence of living sang from the softened tips of his fingers to the dripping point of his sword. It sang. Peda could have wept, if he had not long ago forgotten how. Wheels of seasons had passed since his feet stepped on this soil, since his lungs had drawn in this air, since the Land had sung to him in her own wordless tongue. That she sang still was little short of a miracle.

"Peda, we found one alive."

He turned, stilling the joy in his eyes. "Is he willing to talk?"

"Not very."

"Then kill him."

Bedon blinked at him, at the bloody man he held by the hair who stared back in dawning terror. "You sure?"

He sighed, illogically annoyed that people would talk and interrupt what they couldn't hear whispered in the very wind through the leaves. "Kill him. We've no reason to take prisoners."

"S-sir!" the wounded enemy gasped, blue eyes wide. "Don't! I..."

"You? Give me a reason, Aracian, to let you go on polluting our air with your breath. Look at the man holding your hair, Aracian. That's an Aracian slave-ring he wears. We all have one like it. Similar sense of fashion, you might say."

The man shifted slightly, face twisted in pain. "No, sir," he said softly.

"No." He stared into the fear and pain in the other's eyes and was distantly impressed by how steady they were. Soldiers grew accustomed to the knowledge that they would die, he supposed. "No pleading drivel I should listen to before I cut your throat?"

He shrugged, then grimaced. "I've never owned a slave." The eyes dropped, lifted to the sun-touched leaves, and then met Peda's again. "I don't want to die."

"No one does, Aracian." With his left hand, Peda pushed back the hood hiding the white streak in his hair and watched.

The blue Aracian eyes followed the movement and widened in astonishment and renewed terror. And revulsion. Wrenching his head free, he spat in the dirt. "Kill me then, sorcerer."

Bedon didn't bother recapturing the Aracian's hair, he just kicked the man flat on his face. "The word is 'Bard', Aracian bastard," he hissed.

Peda's gesture stilled Bedon's lifting sword. He nodded and jerked the Aracian up again. Peda stared one more time at the hatred and sudden, odd satisfaction. The Aracian knew he was going to die. He had to. And yet, for some reason, he welcomed it. Because his death would validate the pity he had for the natives of this Land and his revulsion for the magics that he refused to accept.

For a blinding moment Peda could feel the splintered shards of his harp in his hands, see the snapping flames that had consumed those jagged fragments of his soul. The licking non-sound of fire flickered in his ears, dancing tragic poetry with the song of the Land, leaping and twisting to the thump of his own heartbeat.

Slowly, the memory of the ruined harp faded. Peda blinked back the flames and saw that the utter disgust and satisfaction had dimmed in the Araician's eyes and the fear was back. His lips twisted as he drove his sword into the dirt and strode forward, unwinding a braided leather cord from around his wrist.

Bedon yanked the Aracian's chin up and the cord snaked around the vulnerable throat. A blink of confusion in the fear and Peda smiled.

"I don't want you spilling any more of your blood in our perfectly good dirt," he whispered and there was nothing in his gaze for the blue eyes to see but death.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago to fill a prompt and it quietly shoved itself into a much bigger universe that's lurking in my head. Of course, the universe refuses to politely be written, so... hmph. I shall take what I can get.


End file.
